How many Africans are there in Guangzhou, China? If you really want to know you must read this!

How many Africans are there in Guangzhou? This is the first question that came up to my mind when I first realised that there was a sizable population of black Africans in Guangzhou, in late 2008. This is also the question that several academics and dozens of journalists have asked me: ‘how many?’, it seems that everybody wants to know the figure. In order to provide an ‘accurate’ answer, let me do some explaining first. As I have pointed out time and again, truth is that no body really knows how many Africans are there in the city. That figure is impossible to know! And this is due to several reasons. Just to point out a few: a) the Chinese government does not openly share information about the numbers of foreigners in the country (Yes, in 2011 a national census recorded some 600,000 foreigners living in the country, but…